Live data from Hacker News

Mayer Declares That It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time at Yahoo

allthingsd.com

11–20 of 44 posts

Re: Mayer Declares That It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time at Yahoo

#11

One element of the memo I was happy to see, was the dogfooding of Yahoo! Mail/Calendar, as in, people at Yahoo! will start using it rather than Microsoft Exchange. Sometimes I think powerful personalities at Yahoo! IT, with a bit too much money and people working for them, have caused a not insignificant amount of the downfall at Yahoo! by treating the company like it was a financial firm, or the Department of Defens…

> Sometimes I think powerful personalities at Yahoo! IT, with a bit too much money and people working for them, have caused a not insignificant amount of the downfall at Yahoo! by treating the company like it was a financial firm, or the Department of Defense, instead of a digital media destination

I've seen much the same thing happen at a company I worked at in the early late 1990's and early 2000's. The CIO had a heroic moment years ago and used the political capital to run IT as he saw fit, catering to the email/web needs on the sales/business side, but demonizing engineers who had more stringent needs. (Even to the point of a crony calling the complaining engineers "terrorists" in a public speech shortly after 9-11.)

Re: Mayer Declares That It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time at Yahoo

#13

One element of the memo I was happy to see, was the dogfooding of Yahoo! Mail/Calendar, as in, people at Yahoo! will start using it rather than Microsoft Exchange. Sometimes I think powerful personalities at Yahoo! IT, with a bit too much money and people working for them, have caused a not insignificant amount of the downfall at Yahoo! by treating the company like it was a financial firm, or the Department of Defens…

When at Yahoo, I had multiple flame wars with the exec in charge of the Blackberries decision. I was told in no uncertain terms how it was the only option due to security/other concerns and this person just didn't care much about the loss in productivity. Happy to see Marissa sorted that out in her first month.

Re: Mayer Declares That It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time at Yahoo

#17
post #2

Seems like a lot of rearranging the deck chairs. Hopefully the real work of significantly restructuring the company is happening behind the scenes where allthingsd can't see.

The key to fixing Yahoo is changing Yahoo's culture. That's exactly what she's doing, one step at a time. Why not start with some low-hanging bureaucratic fruit? These are the kinds of issues that drive top performers nuts.

Re: Mayer Declares That It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time at Yahoo

#20

Maybe I'm becoming cynical, but reading memos like this makes me resent the cubicle world of Corporate America more and more. How about Hawaiian Shirt Friday? Can you change corporate culture by removing turnstiles and parking barriers?

Can you change corporate culture by removing turnstiles and parking barriers?

Try asking yourself the opposite question... "Can you change culture by adding turnstiles and parking barriers?"

Post reply on HN